Monday, March 23

Most members of my family managed to be born in spring, that is why March and April are the most festive months of the year here. We used to organize thematic birthdays parties, masquerades, family sports competitions and so on. Those parties were hilarious.

Later various diseases started to take us down one by one. So those, who are still alive, have learned to treasure the rare occasions of just gathering around the table talking, sharing recent news and photographs of the past and present.

Somehow birthdays have turned into tributes to those who passed away. There is a tradition to propose the second toast to the birthday girl's or boy's parents. The parents are not with us any longer, and these moments are the most intense and sad.The toast is usually followed by a silence, as everyone goes back to the past mentally for a few moments to meet the dearest ones again. These were the days we thought would never end...

Then I slip into the present and see the little ones fooling around, playing and amusing themselves. They still believe that a birthday is a day of fun, presents and laughter.

Monday, March 16

The forecast promised sunny weekends, so I invited the guy to have a walk in one of my favourite suburbs. He had never been there before, so we had a tour around the park and the palace wondering how inconvenient living there would be.

The guy pictured how complicated it would be to run around the house palace if the bedrooms were in the left wing of the building, the kitchen were in the right one and the living-room -somewhere in the middle. He would watch football and ask me nicely to get him a beer from a fridge. I tried to explain that the match would have been over by the time I fetched a beer from the kitchen. To that he promised to buy a bicycle so that I could go around the place faster.What a nice guy, you'd think.

Anyway, we walked down the park paths, skated on the frozen lake and had a lovely dinner later in the evening. All weekend long the song "Strangers In The Night" was playing in my head...

Friday, March 13

Once again children have reminded me that life is a gift, which is to be treasured.

I have been to an amazing exhibition called "We are different, but we are friends" that presents more than 700 works created by handicapped children from dozens of orphanages and compensatory kindergartens throughout the country.

The children have created a lot of colourful and very talented works in various techniques such as painting, graphic arts, makrame, patch work, engraving, applique' work, origami, herbarium, embroidery, beadwork, stained-glass, lace trimming, batic, stuffed toys and so on. I was astonished by very high quality of their arts and crafts and by immense joie de vivre radiating from each and every creation.

It was a fairy-like trip to the Happy Land that only children could enter and understand and I loved it.

Wednesday, March 11

The beauty of freelancing is flexible working hours and an opportunity to flee any time. That was what I did last Friday. I got a return ticket to the capital and gone to see my friends.

On Saturday we visited a well-known picture gallery to look at the paintings of late 19th and early 20th centuries. The canvases took me in the past and I had a walk down lovely Paris streets, New York broadways and tiny Moscow alleyways. We also spent a couple of hours at impressionism halls, as I'm a huge admirer of this art movement. I love impressionists' boisterous and lively painings, because they are full of life and sunshine. I always feel a little happier after visiting these exhibitions.

On Sunday I managed to see almost all my friends. We went to my favourite blues bar "Road House" to listen to the most outstanding bluesmen and sing a few songs along. I performed "Wild Thing" right at the stage. It was a blast! What a wonderful night it was.

On Monday we just walked around the city, skated at a local park and talked and talked until my train left at 10 PM.

Friday, March 6

Spring is everywhere and my head is full of flapdoodle romance. The guy from "Liverpool" and I met a couple of more times. We walked, talked and laughed a lot.

The guy snows me in with compliments and I just can't keep concentration on anything at all. At his age (47) he sends lovely text messages such as "Pleasure of learning to know you is beyond my oral description. Thank you for your lovely company. I am looking forward to seeong you at your earliest possible convenience" or "Dear Sunny, spring is coming, Mother Nature wakes up from Her deep winter sleep again starting to blow life and joy to the flowers. Even the flowers are so beautiful they never can be in that full bloom being able to challenge your beauty and charm. I want to congratulate you for your day today". I have never received that long messages on the phone in my life.

Wednesday, March 4

The major repairs are over in my appartment, so I'm back and very excited about it. There are still some minor things to do. Fortunatelly, they can be done while I'm around.

The bathroom is now of a lovely sky-blue colour and the restroom is in emerald one.

The room is still under reconstruction. As soon as the walls are ready I'm going to glue the wallpapers of a deep orange colour and hang curtains with some ethnic pattern. I have also found a huge bookcase in an incredibly beautiful mahogany color, which has enough space for all the books I have and a room for those to be bought. The plan is to turn my roon into some African landscape (see the pic). Hope it will work out.

Monday, March 2

Saturday night was not the lonliest one of the week. I persuaded one of my former college friends to go out.

We went to one of the best bars in the neighbourhood called "Liverpool", had a few mojitos, lots of chatting and even met a couple of nice guys. The guys were rather drunk and burst into songs from time to time. I liked one of the songs so much that decided to find out its title to download an original version later. My friend just shook her head, she knew it was not only the song that I liked.

The following day one of those guys and me had a lovely walk down the river recollecting countless jokes and anecdotes, talking about the differences between cultures of our countries. Speaking of the differences. The guy told me the following story:

An American and a Russian farmer had a few shots at a bar and started to boast.The American farmer said: "My farm is so big that it takes a day to drive around it by car".The Russian farmer responded: "Yeah, our cars are as bad as yours".